Homemade Buttermints

These are delicious mint candies that are hard on the outside but melt in your mouth. They can be given as a gift or devoured at home. Either way they are addictive. They have a very nice old-fashioned feel to them and contain no weird ingredients.

Be careful with the peppermint oil. I used 6 drops of mine but it’s a good idea to use three or four first and check the flavour. The peppermint oil is extremely strong.

This is quite a big recipe. I managed to make 200 candies out of it and filled 5 jars. All worth it though as I can’t stop eating them!

Ingredients:

3/4 cup softened unsalted butter

1/2 tsp salt

6 cups icing sugar

3 Tbsp milk

6 drops peppermint oil

food colouring (optional)

Place butter in the bowl of an electric mixer and mix until light and fluffy. Once that happens, add salt, peppermint oil and food colouring if you’d like the candies to have a very smooth colour. If you prefer them streaky, add the food colouring at the end and knead it in by hand.

Next add icing sugar in portions and follow with milk.

Keep beating until the mixture is a uniform powder which packs immediately when you touch it.

Remove the bowl from the mixer and form the dough into long ‘logs’ with your hands.

Cut with the pizza cutter or knife to form little pillow shapes.

You can go ahead and press each one with a fork for an easy decoration but as you can see I skipped this step.

Very important: leave the mints out in room temperature overnight, so that they dry on the outside and become harder.